Things you love/like and dislike/hate about the games you are currently playing...

[JohnnyDelRay]

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Not quite that far into it, but:
LOVE: Game feels very polished, movement, weapon physics, interface, sounds, graphics. All simply beautiful, and a joy to play. Even more so than previous ones.

HATE: Unforgiving stealth. It is challenging stealth, and I don't mind that at all. I'm just a little too impatient to have to redo an entire section all over again because the checkpoints are spaced dependent upon whether you are in a mission phase or not, whereas in open world they are very generous (everytime you pick up a damn leaf basically). Which has led me to just saying 'fuck it' and going loud to finish the mission after the 3rd attempt or so, where in other games such as Dishonored I'd be a lot more patient.

 

[Recusant]

I'm replaying the Thief series, and have just finished The Metal Age (Thief 2). It's been over a decade (lent out my discs and never got them back), and here's what I have to report:

Love: -I'd forgotten how absolutely enormous these levels could be. The great, sprawling expanses give numerous paths to explore and get lost in. They weren't especially impressive visually, even at the time, but they get the job done (with one exception, see below). By now I've played through Deus Ex and Half-Life and System Shock so many times I have them all but memorized; this look back at their contemporaries demonstrates that it wasn't just these games, but trends of the time, that gave rise to excellence.
-The sound. After desperately racing to pick a lock before a group of zombies caught up with me, listening to their moaning grow ever louder and feeling my heart race, I spent the entire next day whipping my head around whenever I heard something behind me, always expecting to see an angry undead monster taking a swing.

Hate: -The technical limitations. This was a product of its time, no question; we could definitely do better now. Do note that I said could, not would- looking at you here, Square- but in the few cases where graphics were a problem, they could often be a big one. It's not hard to make wood, brick, stone, and metal visually distinct, even as a floor texture, but carpeting and tile are different stories, not helped along by the fact that both can come in a wide variety of colors and patterns. Numerous times in the past several days, I'd eagerly raise my blackjack and charge forward onto a lush carpet that turned out to made of linoleum (whoops) or discover only too late I'd spent multiple moss arrows making an already-quiet carpet into a near-silent bed of moss unnecessarily. This could easily be handled by modern artists, but Square decided they'd rather just not bother ::glares at Square again::. Also, Deadly Shadows is up next, and even though I haven't even started it, I'm already dreading the concede-to-inferior-hardware mid-level loading zones that annoyed me so much on my first playthrough. I'll probably be back to report on that later, if this thread's still going.
-I don't know what happened in between the two games, but some of the voice talent they hired... Ugh. It was bad. And I don't mean Zenimax-style mediocre, I mean "grade school drama club" bad. It's only a couple of roles, but in a way that makes it worse; being alongside its well-delivered counterparts makes it all the more jarring. I could probably look up who these people were, but I suspect they probably did multiple voices, and some just turned out badly.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Dark Souls

+ the combat
+ the atmosphere
+ the level design
+ the variety of locations and enemies
+ the amount of available playstyles

- Quelaag and her unbalancedly big health pool
- Trying to find the Cloranthy ring in the Great Hollow (fucking drops from branches)
- The fact that I can't find sexy enough armor for my character (I decided to go full pervert and made a character based on Lisa from DoA, decided to only use the Bandit's Knife and only wear the most revealing armor in the game aside from wearing nothing at all. So far nothing's beaten the Hollow Soldier set).

FFX

+ again, the combat
+ variety of enemies
+ the leveling system being almost a game unto itself
+ having finally progressed to the absurdly fast leveling with triple AP and Overdrive->AP weapons

- lack of difficulty
- amount of grind needed to even remotely be able to challenge the end game bosses
- the story
- most of the characters
- the tougher enemies being just pallet swaps of previous ones

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm replaying the Thief series, and have just finished The Metal Age (Thief 2). It's been over a decade (lent out my discs and never got them back), and here's what I have to report:

Love: -I'd forgotten how absolutely enormous these levels could be. The great, sprawling expanses give numerous paths to explore and get lost in. They weren't especially impressive visually, even at the time, but they get the job done (with one exception, see below). By now I've played through Deus Ex and Half-Life and System Shock so many times I have them all but memorized; this look back at their contemporaries demonstrates that it wasn't just these games, but trends of the time, that gave rise to excellence.
-The sound. After desperately racing to pick a lock before a group of zombies caught up with me, listening to their moaning grow ever louder and feeling my heart race, I spent the entire next day whipping my head around whenever I heard something behind me, always expecting to see an angry undead monster taking a swing.

Hate: -The technical limitations. This was a product of its time, no question; we could definitely do better now. Do note that I said could, not would- looking at you here, Square- but in the few cases where graphics were a problem, they could often be a big one. It's not hard to make wood, brick, stone, and metal visually distinct, even as a floor texture, but carpeting and tile are different stories, not helped along by the fact that both can come in a wide variety of colors and patterns. Numerous times in the past several days, I'd eagerly raise my blackjack and charge forward onto a lush carpet that turned out to made of linoleum (whoops) or discover only too late I'd spent multiple moss arrows making an already-quiet carpet into a near-silent bed of moss unnecessarily. This could easily be handled by modern artists, but Square decided they'd rather just not bother ::glares at Square again::. Also, Deadly Shadows is up next, and even though I haven't even started it, I'm already dreading the concede-to-inferior-hardware mid-level loading zones that annoyed me so much on my first playthrough. I'll probably be back to report on that later, if this thread's still going.
-I don't know what happened in between the two games, but some of the voice talent they hired... Ugh. It was bad. And I don't mean Zenimax-style mediocre, I mean "grade school drama club" bad. It's only a couple of roles, but in a way that makes it worse; being alongside its well-delivered counterparts makes it all the more jarring. I could probably look up who these people were, but I suspect they probably did multiple voices, and some just turned out badly.

As much as I like the fact you spend much of Thief 2 actually theifing(and not playing with monsters), I somewhat disliked how one level was pretty much the previous level but with 20% more level(because apparently you had to break in and leave first before you could actually break in, steal the goodies and then leave). I also remember feeling annoyed how the final level was pretty much running around a factory and trying to build something while the final boss yells at you over the loudspeaker. It didn't feel climatic, it felt like going to work.

Also, while I love the level design for Life of The Party, I disliked the fact that when you actually reach said Party, the whole thing seems to be entirely over and done with. I'd have to wait until Dishonored before someone did the level properly.

 

[Bawsto]

Did you finish the game? ME II is example of exactly the opposite of ME III...terrific intro and ending (mission) leave a great final impression of the game.

I'll give you the former, but no, not a terrific ending. Pretty horrid if you have any regard for the basic tenets of storytelling. The first game nails the structuring of its narrative that makes for a satisfying arc, but ME2 haphazardly squeezes in its few key story missions among the endless stream of recruiting / loyalty missions. There's no sense of urgency to maintain intrigue, and the writing's not good enough to sustain ME2 with pure character development. It doesn't build to the end, it just announces it and then it's time to do it.

 

[KiyoMoon]

Warframe

What I like:
Variety of Weapons and Characters(Warframes) which you can mold to your own playstyle. You can basically play it how you want. Wanna go guns-blazing through a level with a Character that can heal itself to full and has basically infinite Energy? Sure! Wanna be stealthy with a Character which is basically like a Rhinoceros? Hey, do your thing!

What I don't like:
Constant gripe of the Playerbase about how this and that update ruined the game for them. Granted some additions are plain BS like the Rush-Mission, or the frequencies on which Nullifiers spawn. They may be squishy, but oh boy, if you run into a hoard of them you'll have a bad time.